On Sun, Jun 09, 2002 at 02:36:49PM -0700, Nicholas Miell wrote:> > > > WINE needs to be able to handle a symlink on ext2, so it can> > damn well convert back. It's OK to give WINE some hack to get at> > the content; it's not OK to hack bash to interpret .lnk files.> > Why would bash even want to interpret shortcut files? They're a proprietary,> Windows-only format that have no real use beyond icons in the Start Menu> or on the desktop. Hacking the filesystem to treat something that

Well, you could say that about FAT as well.

> fundamentally is not a symlink as a symlink is even stupider than> hacking bash to do the same thing.

The symlink file can have more functions as you have stated, and oneof them is symlink. It works in Windows and it works in cygwin. Supportfor symlinks on vfat is similar to long names, for example -- youcould live with abbreviations but it's reasonable to be compatiblewith the other party.

> > One can live with an occasional broken symlink:> > "foo" --> "[UNIMPLEMENTED LINK TYPE]"> > One can also live with "foo.lnk". (It's much easier and saner, too.)

It's not. The content of the file is not nicely readable. Andoperation done on the file in Windows and on Linux (like writing thefile) now differs because Windows (and cygwin) follow the symlinkwhile Linux with vfat mounted does not.

> > > Face it, VFAT isn't a Unix filesystem and introducing ugly hacks to make> > > it more similar to one will only cause problems in the long run. If you> > > want symlinks, use a real filesystem or use umsdos on your favorite FAT> > > filesystem. (Assuming that umsdos still works...).

It's not "want symlinks", it's more like "want similar behaviour" and"be compatible".

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